June 02, 2017

Rising Panic

I offer my deep thanks to the 11 people who made donations in response to my post the other day. Except for two people whose names are new to me, the donors are all long-time supporters of the blog. It's difficult to find words to adequately express my gratitude to all those who have regularly and repeatedly helped me and my writing over the years. And great thanks to the new donors, too!

Unfortunately, I'm still $700 short of what I need to pay the bills due next week, the most critical of which is obviously rent. The $700 figure includes about $50 for food, which I'll run out of in several days. I won't run out of food for Sasha, even though she's not interested in most of it on many days. The supply of cat food will last for a couple of weeks, at least. And yesterday, after trying four other kinds of food, I finally found something that seemed to please her. She still didn't eat nearly enough, but she ate some of it.

The $700 represents survival for me. $700. Hardly a huge amount of money. I have to admit that, when I consider the ungraspable amounts of money sloshing around this rotten, corrupt, nauseating country -- and when I continually read of people of dubious character and questionable motives raising tens of thousands of dollars for God knows what in a matter of days -- my own predicament fills me with rage. My primary concern over the last decade of writing has been to foster empathy and compassion for the innocent victims of cruelty and brutality, through an understanding of (among other things) the roots of the cruelty and brutality that are tragically so common in our world at present.

And for this, my reward will be to see the end of my life because I was unable to raise less than a thousand dollars. I've explained before that the new owners of my building (new as of a few years ago) have plans to demolish this building and the one next to it, so they can erect a new apartment building that will, as is now the practice in Los Angeles and other cities, charge rents that will be unaffordable for me and many others. When they evict tenants for purposes of demolition, the owners are legally obligated to pay tenants for the expenses of relocation. In my case, they will have to pay me around $20,000. If they can get rid of me and avoid that payment, they will be more than happy to do so. Non-payment of rent provides the perfect opportunity.

And make no mistake: if I were to be evicted now, without the benefit of that $20,000, my life would essentially be over. How could I possibly afford to move -- and where could I move without any funds for the required payment for a new apartment? I'd be homeless, as would Sasha, assuming she is still with us at that point. Perhaps a friend will take Sasha in, although I doubt that even a friend would be eager to assume responsibility for a cat who is very, very sick. Sasha's days are almost certainly numbered now, no matter what happens.

And given my own serious health problems, I couldn't possibly survive homelessness. I suppose that's a relief in one way. I'd be dead in short order. It sickens me, in multiple ways, that my death can be all but guaranteed for less than what many people would spend in a single evening on the town -- or for less than the price of one ticket to "Hamilton."

It's horrible to think about. Let's not permit the fuckers to win this one. If you can and are of a mind to help, I would be profoundly grateful. I still have this nagging conviction that my work here is not done yet. I need to get back to it, and I'm trying to do just that. But I can't do it without your help.